Methane-Eating Bacteria Could Combat Global Warming 218
realwx writes "New Zealand scientists have found a bacterium, named 'Methylokorus infernorum,' that eats a key global warming chemical. Found in a hot spring, the bug lives off of methane emissions from geothermically active areas. A scientist quoted in the article stated that a cubic meter of liquid containing the bacterium would consume about 11kg of methane each year. 'But Dr Stott cautioned that such an application was probably some years into the future. He said it was unlikely the micro-organism, which prefers acidic conditions of about 60C, could ever be added to sheep or cows' food to stop the animals releasing methane.'"
interesting timing (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Oblig. (Score:5, Funny)
No, that's what this [beanogas.com] is for!
What did he see? (Score:2)
Dlugar
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
where is the cow, hidden right now
Just burn it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
How many cows and/or sheep would I have to keep on the roof of my car to get enough methane to drive to the store?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.epa.gov/lmop/ [epa.gov] is probably a good place to start looking.
I was pretty much thinking that TFA was pretty dumb since most of the sources of methane which can't be captured for fuel, aren't going to deal well with this sort of technology. The ones that are, can an
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Just burn it? (Score:4, Informative)
As I see it, the problem is that the cycle is carbon dioxide to long chain hydrocarbons in plants then animals to methane. If you burn the methane, you create a closed cycle, which has no net effect on the atmosphere (you put back the same amount of carbon dioxide you remove). Sequestering methane makes a lot less sense than sequestering carbon dioxide, since you can't easily get energy out of carbon dioxide.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This is highly relevant for New Zealand as 50% of our greenhouse gas emissions are in fact from cow methane.
Re: (Score:2)
Collecting the droppings rather than letting them naturally decay, and processing the intestines after slaughter, rather than discarding them.
Unfortunately, I'm unable to find any sources that state what percentage of methane that would capture. Most every source just bundles all cattle methane emissions together, and often incorrectly labels it all "burping."
Re: (Score:2)
The hidden danger. (Score:3, Funny)
Sounds promising... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Sounds promising... (Score:5, Funny)
I pretty sure that even if this technology is sufficiently developed it should still be classified as vaporware.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The way it works is that carbon that's absorbed by the growing plants that the ruminants eat is converted to methane in their rumen. This is then burred by t
A Cows Stomach (Score:2, Interesting)
So, im not Biologist, but wouldn't the inside of a cows stomach have lots of acid? And the internal body temperature of a cow is probably similar to a humans. So we have the acid, and we are off by about 20 degrees. I'm sure some geneticist somewhere can figure out how to adapt it to these conditions.
Another idea may be to put these bacteria into the pools where the manurer is left to decompose?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Cow body temperature: 38.6C [hypertextbook.com]
old news (Score:2, Interesting)
Just imagine (Score:5, Funny)
CO2-Eating Organism Could Combat Global Warming (Score:5, Funny)
mod parent Insightful (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
330 teragrams emitted annually by people (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It can, in turn, process 11 kg - barely 1% of its own mass.
In a year.
To use your figure of 330 Tg of methane, that's 30 petagrams of the damn stuff. That's 30 billion tonnes. Volumewise, that's 1/5th of Lake Erie (150 trillion liters - 150 billion tonnes - of water).
And that's assuming you could get all of the gas in to Lake Erie in the first place.
Re: (Score:2)
L'histoire se répète? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
:)
Re: (Score:2)
We're breaking everything and the world is going to end thanks to global warming. We know this for 100% sure, because we're so smart. But we shouldn't try doing anything to fix it, because we're so damn stupid.
Do I have that about right?
It seems to me the only option left is for us to just die. You go first, the rest of us will follow.
Really.
We will.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
But fixing the problem with a solution class that in virtually every single instance where it has been tried ('let's introduce species x') not only failed, but even made things worse, is not a good idea in my mind.
Solve the problem at the core: stop burning fossil fuels. I don't have incandescent light bulbs in my house for years. When it gets cold, I put on a sweater, and a vest, instead of turning up the heat. I drive 60MPH to wo
Re: (Score:2)
If you think that's an option, you are seriously deluded.
Me neither, but so what? Eve if every single person were to get rid of incandescent bulbs, the difference in energy use would be infinitesimal, and would be swallowed up by next year's growth in energy demand. Such measures are a good way to save money, but do nothing for the environment.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Human meddling... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to believe sometimes that we as humans are simply not smart enough, or perhaps do not see enough of the big picture, to understand the intricacies of the world or the universe to implement such grand scale processes.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I will get out of bed as soon as I fully understand the implications...
Solutions are tough when egos are involved (Score:3, Insightful)
Still, the globe on which we currently reside is going through changes. I am sure we play a part, but let us not get an ego. This planet has known this for some time longer than us.
Reducing our negative impacts and increasing our positive cannot be wrong by definition in my book. We can only do positive together.
Yeah, yeah... (Score:2)
rj
Re: (Score:2)
Hubris, Enviro (Score:2)
Humans are also pretty good at adapting, unless the planet undergoes dramatic climate change like it did in that scary movie.
ya let's stop the animals from farting (Score:2)
It's the ironic world we live in where we have to stop global warming at all costs even by disrupting the natural order of things.
Methane + Archaea = gasoline (Score:2)
Nevermind the tiger, put a genetically enhanced cow in your tank.
Why not skip a step? Flash roast beef! (Score:2)
You would have to breed rare, medium and well done varieties, of course, but I'm sure a bit of selective breeding would sort that out.
The only problem is that you'd have to ban smoking near the herd
All I have to say is... (Score:2)
Feeding to cattle (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
(There will be less antibiotic cures for people after antibiotic feeds to cows.)
Global warming is overestimated, antibiotic resistance is underestimated. First one, AFAIK, is a fictional one.
Forget cows (Score:2)
and in both cases you ought to be able to at least meet the 60 degree criterion
easily enough.
Wasted energy (Score:2)
the problem are clathrates, not cows. (Score:2)
The problem isn't the cows - although they do fart an enormous amount of methane into the air.
The problem are the clathrates - methane hydrates - that are locked up in the tundra and under the sea. In a nutshell: the tundra has been acting like a giant methane sink for the past several jillion years. If it melts down, and goes quickly, it will release its methane and basically slo
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Solution #2 (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks, and sorry for the semi-offtopic post.
Re:Solution #2 (Score:4, Funny)
Ooooor, you could try to use technology to improve the situation. But don't let me interrupt your Quixotian quest to change people by admonishing them. Get them to stop eating beef while you are at it.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree, only a hippie could be silly enough to believe that the solution is in convincing people into going out of their natural way to "save the world", that's completely ignorant of the human nature and more particularly our ordering of priorities to think it can work.
Re: (Score:2)
It's fundamental to human nature. At the opposite end of the scale from hippies, you have the religious conservatives who think that they can teach kids to abstain from sex - no need for condoms! Everyone is a little bit fascist...
Re: (Score:2)
Everyone is a little bit fascist...
Make that hippie. The religious conservatives you referred to are, in a sense, hippies, albeit a special kind of hippies, in that they spend all their energy trying to make people care about whatever they think is oh so important, be it "saving the planet" or "not committing a sin of flesh".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Solution #2 (Score:5, Funny)
Quixotian? LOL
There's nothing wrong with this neologism, as it conveys perfectly accurately the message that the author intended to emit, by making a reference to something that everyone knows about...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Did my comment turn you on to the point you had to perform that sort of intellectual masturbation that was strictly irrelevant to the topic at hand anyways?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
wrong. populations in many western countries have actually dropped. if it wasn't for migration many would be in decline.
the earths population is commonly estimated to peak at 20 billion with current trends.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
That having been said, the website you quote in your sig is so full of poor spelling that by the time I got to "You don't need to be a climate scientist to understand what is happening," I started to feel sorry for whoever was maintaining the site. Its a site that refutes the overwhelming conclusions of the entire branch of climatology and it says, "Hey, you don't have to be an expert on this stuff to realize its a total sham
Re: (Score:2)
People who believe that eliminating taxation and reverting to 19th-century ideas free markets are a panacea for all the world's problems, pretty much.
That and, well, opinions can't ever be wrong these days, apparently. That means that if someone wants to discard information learned by people who have likely forgotten more about how the climate works than the deniers are eve
Re: (Score:2)
Seems to me that the backwards 19th century was a lot less bloody than its more progressive 20th. Strictly in terms of saving lives and defending mother earth, racist imperialist male dominated societies seem to be a lot better for the planet. Really, if you want to save the earth, take away the women's right to vote.
Re:here's a shocker (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's another shocker. Planting trees isn't always a good solution, and it can sometimes contribute to the problem. Not all forests release more O2 than they store CO2, plus they decrease the Earth's surface albedo. Fortunately most tropical forests do release more O2, except new forests (young trees release more CO2 it seems).
Re: (Score:2)
Where are these trees getting the carbon they're binding and releasing? Soil has an incredibly low carbon concentration.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Plants releasing CO2? That defies basic biology.
No it doesn't. All plants respire. They convert sugars (and starch) and oxygen to carbon dioxide and water. During the day, they also convert carbon dioxide and water to sugar (then starch) and oxygen. Photosynthesis is just a way of storing the chemicals they need for respiration. If they are not getting enough sunlight, then they will emit more carbon dioxide than they consume.
The real problem is when they decompose and turn carbon dioxide (which they sequestered) into methane.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Grow a tree and you have removed carbon from the atmosphere. Burn it down and you have put it back again
Re: (Score:2)
You aren't going to change human nature. The only thing that you can do to reduce beef consumption in the long term is to make it more expensive for people to purchase.
Given that, technological solutions should be welcomed. I agree that reducing beef consumption would be the superior solution, but if that isn't going to happen, won't reducing the impact of beef production be better than nothing?
Re: (Score:2)
Somehow I'm not sure that it is wise to try to convince the other 5 billion people on the planet that they are eating their dead relatives. But hey, the Spanish had some success in forced conversion - so go ahead, try to put the fear of Vishnu in us all.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
-karmaburn
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"Cattle can graze on unirrigated badlands where crop lands are impractical."
The problem with your argument is that in reality the vast, vast majority of cows are raised on flat land and are fed corn instead of grass.
No the problem with your counter argument is that it is factually false and way off. Most cattle spend less than a season of their lifespan on grain lots. The rest of the time they graze. Not all cattle are free-range. For example managed intensive grazing restricts cattle's roaming range so that they don't overgraze or damage lands. But those are not feedlots and the grass grows naturally.
Your argument would hold more water IF cows were free to range on land that's not suitable for farming instead of being force feed corn.
I'm glad to hear you must now agree with me.
As a rule of thumb, for each step you go up in the food pyramid, only 10% of energy is retained. Putting cows between a person and the vegetable (corn in this case) simply adds inefficiency in the energy transfer. So instead of feeding 10 vegetarians, you're now feeding 1 meat eater.
Again your fact are wrong. Consider the cow. It propels it self be
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
fuck off it is. you clearly have never seen or know fuck all about the slaughter production line.
___
The red meat seems to have clogged your brain arteries.
NOTHING is wasted. the skin is used for leather, the head, hoofs, bones and other products not used for human consumption are turned into pet food. fuck even a cows gal stones are ground up and sold.
___
That's the harvesting you are talking of, not the production.
in comparision growing vegetables is VERY wasteful becau
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you really think any beef you eat nowadays ate grass only for a couple of years? Those days are long over.
Better check your facts. A pure corn will kill a cow in less than a year. The typical cow spends less than a fraction one season on a feedlot. It costs way more to feedlot a cow than to let it eat grass for most of it's life. Only in the final stages of fattening up is it productive. No sane person would grain feed anything over most of it's life. So if you base your conclusions on what you believed was a fact you need to reassess them.
Beef requires 25 kilocalories fodder input for 1 calorie meat output, _that's_ wasteful. Instead of producing beef fodder, you could feed 25 times more people with vegetables and they would live decades longer on top.
I'd like to see your facts. It takes prodigious amounts of water
Re:This will do little or nothing to stop Global (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Mod The Bacteria... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)